Earlier in February it was reported that Research in Motion's BlackBerry OS 6.0 was in the making. Now, BoyGeniusReport has acquired the first screenshots and some details of the OS. A redesigned homescreen, multi-touch gesture support for touchscreen handsets, and system-wide kinetic scrolling are few of the many features unleashed in the major upgrade. RIM is expected to reveal BlackBerry OS 6.0 at the WES 2010 symposium starting April 27, while it will be released sometime in June or July. Hey, that's when the iPhone OS 4.0 update is expected too!
BlackBerry OS 6.0 is expected to be a nifty upgrade to the existing 5.0 version and will bring new set of features. The BGR guys were shown the working of BB OS 6.0 and also given some screenshots for reference by one of their sources at AT&T. RIM has finally implemented system-wide kinetic scrolling, which was recently made available to Symbian S60v5 users as well. Kinetic scrolling over touchscreen BlackBerry handsets gives a fluid experience while browsing through lists, emails, webpages and so on.
Another major addition is system-wide multi-touch support like in webpages, photos app, media player and so on. Of course, multi-touch means you can pinch-and-zoom the small fonts on webpages for it to appear larger and the same gesture works even for photos. The new decked up browser built with WebKit offers tab switching and favorites options for better mobile web experience. The tab switcher comes with transparent display.
Homescreen will also undergo major changes and will be customizable with pages. Just like Android phones, you can have pages full of applications on left and right of the main screen. At the homescreen, you get to pull up the apps menu and then scroll it sideways to access other pages like Favorities, All, home, etc.
One of the most interesting features is the modal pop-ups with gestures that will work well with touchscreen BlackBerry. When the BB OS 6.0 loaded touchscreen BlackBerry phone is tapped and held for a moment, nine icon groups appear on the center of the screen like a context menu. So you basically get to outdo the normal menu options and get more visually-contextual menu icons. The photo application draws quite an inspiration from the iPhone's photo app.
All this info will bring many touchscreen BlackBerry owners to the edge of their seats. However, it looks like it's going to be just a few months wait until BlackBerry OS 6.0 is released.
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